The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [42]
The very fact that he continued to flirt with her even though he knew she was aware of the tricks he got up to only went to prove just what a fool she would be even to think about letting down her guard around him.
‘Fancy taking pity on a poor soldier who’s only got twenty-four hours’ leave before he has to go back and risk getting himself killed for his country?’ he asked her.
Jess gave him a derisive look. ‘Risk getting yourself killed? That’s a good one. Your regiment’s on home duties,’ Jess reminded him.
‘It’s very dangerous, keeping an eye on them barrage balloons,’ he told her, straight-faced. ‘Anything could happen, what with you girls being that desperate to get your hands on a bit of silk to make yourselves a few pairs of new drawers.’
‘Oh, trust you to come up with something smutty like that, Billy Spencer,’ Jess replied scornfully.
‘Come on, you know you like me really,’ he coaxed her, giving her a broad wink. ‘I bet you go to bed every night hoping that I’m going to ask you out.’
‘What? I’ll have you know I do no such thing. I’d have to be out of me wits to go fancying someone like you,’ she told him wrathfully. But she was all too uncomfortably aware of the way her heart was beating far too fast and of the betraying colour that was slowly seeping up under her skin, despite her attempts to control it. Determined not to let him get the better of her, she fanned herself vigorously with her hand and complained, ‘It’s too hot to stand out here listening to you talk a load of rubbish.’
‘Rubbish?’ He gave her a mock injured look. ‘I’ll have you know them was me best girl-catching lines.’
‘Don’t give me that. I’ve heard about how you’ve bin boasting you had a different girl for every day of the week.’
‘Ah, but that’s only because you won’t be my girl, Carrot Top.’
Jess flashed him an indignant look.
‘Say the word and I’ll pack them all in and be true to you and no one else. I can see us now. Number eighty-one’s empty, right next to your Auntie Jane. We could be married and moved in there in next to no time. Allus on at me to settle down, my mam is. Mind you, I don’t know as she’ll be too keen on gingernut grandkids.’
‘Me and you married?’ Jess had to steel herself against the shaky feeling in her stomach. ‘As if!’
‘Why not?’
Suddenly he wasn’t smiling any more and there was a look in his eyes as he stepped closer to her that made Jess feel far too vulnerable.
‘Because…’ feverishly she hunted round for something to say that would bring this dangerous conversation to an end, and quickly, ‘…because I’m already seeing someone else, that’s why not,’ she told him triumphantly.
‘Someone else? You mean you’re walking out wi’ someone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
Who? Jess thought frantically. She’d got herself in a fine mess now, and it was all Billy’s fault, tormenting her like he had, but she wasn’t going to back down now and let him win.
‘You don’t know him,’ she told him airily. ‘He’s an American.’
‘A GI? You’re going out with a GI?’ Billy looked very different without a smile on his face. ‘I thought better of you than that.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Work it out for yourself, Jess. An ordinary decent British soldier isn’t good enough for you. You’d rather have a GI, who throws his money around and boasts about how he can have his pick of the girls just by offering them a few pairs of stockings. Well, good luck to him. Personally, I’d rather have a girl who thinks a bit more